Need recommendations on plastic glue

[MudPuppy]

Before I delve into the disassembly and reassembly of dashes in the '82 I have a few cracks that I would like to fix before they get worse.
And I was wondering what everyone uses and recommends as far as plastic glue?


I did a forum search to no avail.

[txjeeptx]

I haven't had much success with anything other than JB Weld(a dark grey 2 part epoxy), and fiberglass reinforced epoxy resin for really badly busted stuff. Duplicating the leather grain finish of our dash parts can me a difficult task, so I try to do all repairs to the backside of the plastic part, with as little glue as possible on the front side. Any repair will probably need painted to hide the crack, which gets into difficulty matching paint colors, but I've had success matching parts with two spray cans of really close colors of tan sprayed simultaneously. I practiced on a lot of beer cans before bombing the parts.

Eastwood sells some plastic repair stuff, which are probably just epoxy resin kits. Might look into their stuff. I've never tried it, but I do have some of their other products, and their catalog is good "readin room" material.

[MudPuppy]

I haven't had much success with anything other than JB Weld(a dark grey 2 part epoxy), and fiberglass reinforced epoxy resin for really badly busted stuff. Duplicating the leather grain finish of our dash parts can me a difficult task, so I try to do all repairs to the backside of the plastic part, with as little glue as possible on the front side. Any repair will probably need painted to hide the crack, which gets into difficulty matching paint colors, but I've had success matching parts with two spray cans of really close colors of tan sprayed simultaneously. I practiced on a lot of beer cans before bombing the parts.

Eastwood sells some plastic repair stuff, which are probably just epoxy resin kits. Might look into their stuff. I've never tried it, but I do have some of their other products, and their catalog is good "readin room" material.

Good idea.
Maybe the black won't be so hard to match (I hope). I also found (yea, I am slow) that there is a plastic welder, seems to have a lot of praise. Though most units are pretty darn high $$ but I found a few under $150. I won't be getting one of those soon but it is something I would like to invest in in the nearby future since our cars are about 75% plastic.
Until then I will look into the JB weld and epoxy resin.
We seen a few cracks today, not too bad (yet). And one corner piece of the dash (in the door jam) that was broke off around some nuts that will need to be fixed. But with our plastics being 25+ years old now, weathered, uncared for and hard-to-come-by it's always a good idea to just have some sort of repair type kit for plastics handy anyways.

[txjeeptx]

I bought a cheap(but still somethin like $60) plastic welder kit from Harbor Freight and used it once trying to repair the mirror cover on my o7 F150, which just popped off its mounts but didn't break the mirror(and Ford only sells whole morror assemblies for just under $300). I practiced on some old XJ interior plastics, and made a mess of them. When I felt like I had the hang of it, I tried the mirror cover. All I did was ruin it, and ruin my chances of getting the mount pegs to stick with just epoxy and fiberglass. I also roasted one of my fingers while handling the heating element. I decided to try the welder one more time, and now it won't heat up. Element must have burned out - so it was good for one use. Dango cheapo tools. Can't return it, either, bought it too long ago.

[priya]

I fixed the cracks in my dash and grill and other ABS parts with fiberglass cloth and acetone.  I cut a piece of fiberglass cloth to cover the damaged area, paint the damage area with acetone for a minute or two, lay on the cloth and continue to apply acetone while pushing the cloth into the softened ABS.  In some cases I've taken a broken ABS piece, cut shavings off of it, dropped them in a small amount of acetone and in a few hours or overnight stired it up to have an ABS "putty" that I can put overtop the damaged area. You don't want put it on too thick or the surface of the putty dries before the deeper layers and you'll get solvent bubbles as the acetone tries to come through the the already partially hardened surface layer. You want to make sure you don't get any acetone on the visible side of the part you're repairing or it can soften that part and leave noticeable marks such as finger prints which can be sanded out unless on a textured surface. It will also remove colour from visible surfaces that are painted such as the dash.  Sometimes after partially embedding the fiberglass cloth I rough the surface up a bit with sandpaper, apply fiberglass resin and hardner and another piece of fiberglass cloth.  This has worked very well for me and greatly strengthens the cracked area I believe much more so than just a glue or plastic welder could ever do.

[GRONK]

I deal with mending plastic and aluminum all the time, here's what I recommend:

I NEVER use JB Weld on plastic.  It doesn't have the proper reaction to bond with plastic and unless you really blob it on, it doesn't have the strength.  Plus, working with it when cold is near impossible.

I recommend a simple 2 part epoxy found at any hardware store  These will come in a 2 part syringe thingie and you have to mix them before applying to activate the chemicals.  These will get HOT and will permanently bond plastic (and what ever you get on there by accident) for ever.  Not good in fuel/oil environments, but will be perfect on anything in the interior.  It's sandable and east to paint once cured.  The 5 min cure epoxy is great, but I recommend the 20 (stronger when cured)